Are there species smaller than 1 mm?

2013/07/24 by Axel G. Rossberg, Tim Rogers, Alan J. McKane · 26 citations
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Environmental Science · Mathematics · #Abundance (ecology) #Adaptability #Biodiversity #Biology #Ecology #Evolution and Genetic Dynamics #Evolutionary biology #Genetics #Identification (biology) #Mathematics #Meiobenthos #Mutation rate #Plant and animal studies #Population #Product (mathematics) #Sociology #Species Distribution and Climate Change

paper · pdf · doi:10.1098/rspb.2013.1248

published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences 280(1767), 20131248 (Royal Society)

openalex publication_date 2013/07/24 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01

Abstract

The rapid advance in genetic sequencing technologies has provided an unprecedented amount of data on the biodiversity of meiofauna. It was hoped that these data would allow the identification and counting of species, distinguished as tight clusters of similar genomes. Surprisingly, this appears not to be the case. Here, we begin a theoretical discussion of this phenomenon, drawing on an individual-based ecological model to inform our arguments. The determining factor in the emergence (or not) of distinguishable genetic clusters in the model is the product of population size with mutation rate-a measure of the adaptability of the population as a whole. This result suggests that indeed one should not expect to observe clearly distinguishable species groupings in data gathered from ultrasequencing of meiofauna.

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